Unit 1. The style of official documents.

All major FS styles, the style of official documents including, usually comprise se­veral subdivisions or substyles. Thus, the style of official documents falls into the style (or substyle) of 1) diplomatic documents, 2) business documents, 3) legal documents, 4) military documents.

Like other styles of language, the style of official documents has a definite commu­nicative aim and its own system of interrelated language means. The main aim of this type of communication is to reach an agreement and to state the conditions binding two parties in an undertaking, the parties being the state and the citizen, the citizen and the citizen, the state and the state. This most general aim of the style of official documents predetermines the peculiarities of the style, such as their composition, the extensive use of special terminology and clichés, the use of abbreviations (particu­larly abundant in military documents).

Let us now have a closer look at all the four subdivisions of the style of official do­cuments.

(a) The Style of Diplomatic Documents.

To the sphere of international relations we attribute the style of diplomatic documents, such as treaties, agreements, conventions, declarations, protocols, exchange of notes, memoranda, acts, engagements, regulations, amend­ments, terms of..., minutes, etc. (They are nearly 60 in number).

The style of diplomatic documents has its own characteristic features or style mar­kers which help us to differentiate it from other FS.

Perhaps, the most striking feature of such documents is their composition. The principal parts of diplomatic documents in their usual order are:

1) The preamble or preliminary recitals, setting out the names of parties (Heads of State, States or Governments), the purpose for which the document was concluded, the " resolve " of the parties to enter into it, and the names and designations of the plenipotentionaries (i.e. envoys or commissioners appointed to act according to their own discretion).

2) The substantive clauses, sometimes known as the "dispositive provisions" or the body.

3) Тhе formal (or final) clauses dealing with technical or formal points or matters relative to the application or entry into force of the document. Usually such clauses relate separately to the following: the date of the documents, the mode of acceptance, opening of the documents for signature, entry into force, duration, etc.

4) Formal acknowledgment of signature.

5) Signature by the plenipotentiaries.

Such forms have come into existence in the course of historical development of the style and now, because of the necessity for absolute precision and the avoidance of any ambiguity which is important in international relations, these forms are so firmly fixed that scarcely any deviation is permitted.

Another important feature of this style is the use of special terms, i.e. words or word groups to name a notion characteristic of some special field of knowledge or sphere of communication. Diplomatic terminology includes terms proper (to accredit, dis­patch, order of precedence, negotiator, ambassador), and words used in the sphere of international relations in some special meaning: instrument (document), article (part of a treaty), clause (part of a document), party (either side in a contract), provision (statement).

The use of non-assimilated borrowings, mainly from Latin and French (note verbale, aidememoire, proces-verbal, presides, bona fide, etc) should also be mentioned in connection with the diplomatic terminology. Borrowings, as we know, are charac­teristic of the English language as a whole, they amount to more than a half of its vocabulary. But for diplomatic practice they are especially relevant as for many centuries Latin and French remained dominant languages in diplomatic relations and all diplomatic documents were composed in Latin and French as late as the 16th cen­tury. Suffice it to say that out of 59 types of diplomatic documents 45 names are of Latin origin, II - of French, I - of Greek and only 2 (settlement and bond) are "home-made", are proper English.

There are also very many obsolete and archaic words (hereto, henceforth, thereon, whereof, whereupon). They are not terms for they are not necessarily bound to the sphere of diplomacy; they may be used in legal practice too. But they clearly show that the style of diplomatic documents is very conservative; it changes very slowly preserving the tendency to use the same stereotyped words and phrases for centuries. Vocabulary is an obvious reflector of distinctions between styles, but so are syntactic structures. Such traits as the predominance of simple, extended sentences and com­plex sentences, the preference for the separation of the subject and the predicate, the abundance of homogeneous members as compared with other styles are peculiar of the style of diplomatic documents. The reason for that lies, perhaps, in the necessity of the transparence of meaning, elimination of ambiguity, and avoidance of the wrong interpretation of the document, which may cause undesirable consequences.

(b) The Style of Business Documents.

Business documents (and letters) are characterized by a high level of standardization. They are in fact a combination of ready-made forms and stereotyped phrases. This standard character of business documents has always been understood as a very effective means of avoiding redundancy with the help of economy of linguistic units. Lucidity and conciseness are very important.

For example, there are certain accepted ways of beginning and ending a business letter. The usual way of address is Dear Sir, Dear Madam, or Dear Mr. Smith, Dear Mrs. Brown if the person addressed to is known. In correspondence with strangers, it is usual to change from Dear Sir-to Dear Mr. Smith-after the first one or two letters have been exchanged.

Yours faithfully, Yours truly are the usual ending for all business letters. Yours sincerely is the usual ending for letters to acquaintances.

The body of the business document (letter) should be concise and to the point, without unnecessary information or explanation, written in short, direct sentences.

There are many standard formulas used:

a) to confirm the receiving of a letter (document):

We have received your letter of.... We thank you for your letter dated… In reply to your letter of… We acknowledge the receipt of.... We duly received your letter...;

b) to express request: Please, inform us.... We shall (should) be obliged if you.... We shall (should) appreciate it if you… We (would) ask you…

c) to refer to a letter With reference to your letter of.... Referring to....We refer...;

d) to apologise: We regret that.... Unfortunately, we… We beg to …

We offer our sincere apologies for e) to thank for: We acknowledge with thanks… We thank you

We appreciate.... etc.

All these formulas contribute to fostering such features as precision, exactness and help to avoid ambiguity. At the same time they simplify and quicken business correspondence.

It should also be mentioned that stereotyped character of business documents is the merit of this style whereas when used in other styles such as the belles-lettres style, or in the publicists style it becomes a drawback.

(c) The Style of Legal Documents.

The law includes many different activities from the drawing up of statutes to the contracting of agreement between individuals, all or which need to be recorded in a written form. In spite of their diversity, it will be not far from the truth to say that each of these activities is in some way connected with the imposition and the confer­ring of rights. And from time to time, of course, someone or other may become very curious about his obligations and try to wriggle out of them- And someone else may try to examine his rights to see if it is possible to stretch them to a credible limit and even further. Consequently, whoever composes a legal document must take the grea­test pains to ensure that ii says exactly what he wants it to say and at the same time gives no opportunity for misinterpretation. So if the composer happens to have used language which can be taken to mean something other than he intended, he has failed in his job.

Of all the language styles this one is perhaps the least communicative as it is designed not so much "to enlighten language-users at large as to allow one expert to register information for scrutiny by another. So the lawyers think that since their productions are for those as familiar with the jargon as themselves there is no need to bother too much about the simpler needs of a general public and that makes the language of documents so complicated.

Doing basically the same things for many years - conveying property, drawing up wills - lawyers have developed linguistic formulas, collections of them for each species of transaction. Therefore much legal writing is not spontaneous, but is copied " from the books" in which established formulas are collected. They are reliable and as far removed from the informal spontaneous conversation as possible. It is essenti­ally visual language, meant to be scrutinized in silence, largely unspeakable at first sight. The reliance on forms which were established in the past and reluctance to take risks by adopting new ones contribute to the extreme linguistic conservatism of legal English.

Legal documents are usually set down as a solid block of script whose long lines extend from margin to margin with practically no spacing and punctuation to defeat fraudulent deletions and additions. The sentences in a document are usually very long and an entire document can be composed of a single sentence and so there was no much help from punctuation to understand it and, besides, since punctuation marks are used mostly as prompts for oral reading of a text and legal documents are composed for reading, they mostly do without them. One more reason for avoiding punctuation is to prevent any possible forgery by changing the places of punctuation marks. Capitalization was chosen as a means of revealing structure, content and logical prog­ression to make up for the lack of punctuation.

Lexically legal documents contain many archaisms, borrowings from French and Latin which add a touch of formality. Legal English contains only complete major sentences, mostly in the form of statements.

(d) The Style of Military Documents.

Military documents may be of different types - plans, estimates, summaries, surveys, evaluation, situation maps, orders; all of them have a certain composition (an operating order has a heading, a body and an ending).

The style of military documents has its own lexical, morphological and syntactical characteristics. Military documents are characterised by their clarity, brevity, preci­sion, non-admittance of many interpretations. The main purpose of making them brief is to economize time necessary for their composition, handling of messages. Military vocabulary includes terms, abbreviations, symbols, special military phra­seology; a wide use of terminology, i.e. words used in one meaning only, helps to avoid ambiguity and misinterpretation. There are also many names - both personal and geographical. Abbreviations are abundant too and their number may be up to 50-60 per cent of the text (e.g. Co - company, SW - south west, w/o - without, FA - Field Artillery, MP - military police). Terms: to attack, order, machine gun, tank, army; phraseological units: to hold a position, to provide protection, to lift fire. On the morphological level we can mention rare use of the possessive case, omission of articles, use of two moods only - imperative and indicative, two tenses - the present ind. and the past ind.

Syntactically military documents include mostly simple short sentences – nominal and verbal one-member. As a rule there are no exclamatory and negative sentences.

List of terms and addreviations from the sample orders.

order for attack – боевой приказ

armored division (Armd Div)

classification - гриф секретности

opord – operation order - боевой приказ

situation - обстановка

intelligence - разведка

Corps - корпус

atk - наступление - attack

S- South

5080 - 8050: координаты: в США X - экватор, Y - меридиан; у нас X - меридиан,

Y - экватор, поэтому при переводе 2 последние цифры становятся вперед.

Inf Div - Infantry Division - пехотная дивизия

Armd Cav - разведывательный (бронекавалерийский)

flank -фланг

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